Toodledo Redesign - July 2011 - Part 2

You must be new here. There are many features that people have been begging for, for YEARS, that have been promised, for YEARS, that have yet to materialize. Then, you log in one day, and see that they have been clandestinely spending all of their time over a number of months on some flashy new theme that no one has been asking for, is extremely frustrating.

Please define "clandestine". They've been saying for some time that they were working on major project. I, and others, surmised it might well be the long promised new UI we so desperately wanted, more than any other single feature. I, and others, based upon the vast majority of posters, am delighted with the result.

Since you didn't want it, you claim no one did. Obviously, you rarely visit these forums, or, if you do visit, you're very selective in your reading. One of the longest running threads has been the request for a new, prettier, more user friendly UI. And that's along with many, many separate threads started at least once a week, asking for the same.

You have every right to your view of the new face, but please, don't claim to represent the majority just because you didn't want it and, by predisposition, don't like it. If you can read, look at the comments since the new version arrived. Yes, there are quite a few complaints about being surprised, but the vast majority are extremely pleased both that the new UI has finally arrived, and at it's appearance and utility.

Maybe TD made a mistake by not announcing it more publicly, but I'll happily take a surprise gift that is simultaneously highly useful and aesthetically pleasing rather than just puttering along with the mundane. YMMV.

Please define "clandestine". They've been saying for some time that they were working on major project. I, and others, surmised it might well be the long promised new UI we so desperately wanted, more than any other single feature. I, and others, based upon the vast majority of posters, am delighted with the result.

If it was not done clandestinely, you, and others, would not have to surmise what it might be.

Since you didn't want it, you claim no one did. Obviously, you rarely visit these forums, or, if you do visit, you're very selective in your reading.

Actually, no. I did a search on 'theme' and 'design' and counted the number of posts where someone was critical in any way of the design, prior to the redesign announcement. Answer: 2.

One of the longest running threads has been the request for a new, prettier, more user friendly UI. And that's along with many, many separate threads started at least once a week, asking for the same.

And they did so without using the words 'theme' or 'design'. Very clever of them.

You have every right to your view of the new face, but please, don't claim to represent the majority just because you didn't want it and, by predisposition, don't like it. If you can read, look at the comments since the new version arrived. Yes, there are quite a few complaints about being surprised, but the vast majority are extremely pleased both that the new UI has finally arrived, and at it's appearance and utility.

The only critical thing I have to say about the new theme, is that it is barely functional on the iphone. My frustration is with their lack of customer relations, not the quality of their development.

Maybe TD made a mistake by not announcing it more publicly, but I'll happily take a surprise gift that is simultaneously highly useful and aesthetically pleasing rather than just puttering along with the mundane. YMMV.

And I'd prefer they deliver some of the functionality that they have been promising for 3+ years.

Please please bring back hiding of the sidebar. It would greatly reduce clutter and add clarity. I like to have a list of tasks in my face and nothing else. The simplicity of having a table of tasks which can be extensively sorted and filtered is what brought me to Toodledo. Once I have my task list filtered and sorted as I need it to be that never gets changed. So I don't need the side bar constantly present.

From another poster: "Please please bring back hiding of the sidebar. It would greatly reduce clutter and add clarity."

Agreed - I like the new design, but being able to minimize the sidebar was a significant advantage. Strongly request you re-institute this capability.

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In the new design, the "View by" section and all of the vast unused white space below it now take up 25 square inches of my screen real estate. I would be so much happier if the "View by" was simply the two words, taking up less than half of a square inch, and working as a drop-down menu from which you could select your view of choice.

I read all these, and there were actually a handful of people who actually wanted a flashy new UI. It is certainly not the universal theme of those threads that you have implied, but it is more than I was familiar with.
It still doesn't mitigate their lacklustre customer communications. In their release announcement, they recognise that adapting to the new site will take time, but they don't respect your time enough to give you advanced notice that they are going to be taking that time from you. They will also tell you, ad nauseum, that other changes that are being requested are next in the pipeline, and will get done 'sooner rather than later', and repeat this mantra for years, while they are, in fact, doing no such thing, as evidence by this new design.This post has been hidden because of negative votes. Click to reveal

Just to add to the irony of those handful of users that wanted UI changes, I've seen more requests for changes to the UI in the last 4 days, than I've seen in the last 4 years.This post has been hidden because of negative votes. Click to reveal

Some comments make me think that Toodledo is not a good tool for them. If it fails so miserably in meeting your organizational needs, you might find another solution in the market to more closely meet your needs.

Thanks for the new UI. I never took the trouble to COMPLAIN about the old one. I did however try a lot of the themes and found compromise there. As a paying customer, I could always have taken my custom elsewhere. The pros far outweigh the cons. What the ToodleDo team have been doing is the proof. I appreciate the liveliness of this community so I exercise my right of free choice and elect to stay and pay...

For those of you who have nothing better to do than to complain, you are always free to go elsewhere. But then, because of your angry, unhappy and difficult-to-please existence, I doubt that any tool (RTM, Nozbe, Outlook, OmniFocus, etc.) will ever meet your demanding qualifications.

You know who you are. For years you complained about TD's user interface. And now that Jake has taken steps to appease your demands, its not good enough. Then just go. Is it 100% the way I would like it? No. Will it ever be? Probably not, but comes very close. And very close is good enough for me to Get Things Done!

@Lance and others... I think many of us are not necessarily just complaining about the new interface.. but upset by the horrendous handling of change management and communications. If you rely on a system every day, who wants to all of a sudden have to stop and rethink it?

While there may have been some communications regarding the changes, they were not front and center in any way. I use TD everyday, but don't use the forums unless I am looking for answers or have questions. So for me, I was blind sided.

While, I love the lively conversation in the forums, I have always felt they are poorly designed and difficult to use because they are proprietary and don't work like other forums. You have to dig to follow things, and there is not alerting mechanism or standardized means of following topics.

TD has all of our email addresses. It would have cost nothing to send an email to all customer letting them know what was coming and what to expect. Similarly, it would've been worth the effort to give a sneak preview, or give customers a choice to try out the new interface.

I've too much invested in my TD system to easily jump... I dread the idea of having to go through converting or trying out other applications.

I was previously a victim of a similarly selfish hijacking of users workflows @ Nozbe a while back. Back in 2009 Michael Sliwinski did some wholesale changes that were handled with what I considered to be a great deal of arrogance... some users in the Nozbe forums suggested TD as an alternative.

I don't know Sliwinski, nor do I know Jake, and I do respect the fact neither Nozbe or TD are large scale enterprises and have limited resources. I suspect they believe given the weights of various priorities, broader customer communication is not the highest of the priorities (yes Jake does engage with customers in the forums regarding specific topics, but that's not what I'm talking about). IMHO, regardless of the potential positives that are being introduced in a new version of an application, I believe customers deserve more respect and more control.

There's been a lot of griping about the new format, and how TD introduced it without warning, at least not to those who don't frequent the forums. In retrospect, it might have made sense to send out a notice the day before. Maybe they will next time, or maybe they had their reasons for not doing so.

But to those who are suggesting that there should have been some kind of preview, and some sort of "choice", does that really make sense? So we could have voted as to whether TD should move forward or stay as it was? Really? TD is a privately owned business and the owners decide how to run that business, and when and how to move their product forward. If they left that up to existing customers, TD might be frozen in time while other competitors moved forward and totally eclipsed TD. Does that make sense from a business perspective?

Others have suggested they keep the old and let each user choose which they prefer. Seriously? So every time they make a change to the interface, they keep the old ones, all of them, and just add another? And each time they add a feature, they have to figure out how to incorporate into all of the versions out there, in addition to mobile versions? I can't believe that anyone who thinks this through can reasonably argue that the change had to be made, and had to be final and universal.

So maybe a day's notice would have been nice psychologically, but it wouldn't have had any bearing on what we had to deal with on the 26th (right date?) which was a new, unfamiliar interface to figure out. This is "selfish hijacking of users workflows"? So how would all you complainers have avoided this issue?

I think this is mostly about being upset about change. You had a tool you presumably liked, and one morning, you had something unfamiliar, maybe even a bit daunting. Not pleasant, but unavoidable if TD is to remain competitive and solve one of the major reasons many potential users didn't choose TD when they shopped around. I was, for a while, one of those people. They had to go to the new interface, they couldn't let their established customers hold them back and limit their appeal to new customers who they need to continue to grow. So, they did what they had to do to be successful. Who here wants them to stop attracting new customers, and stagnate where they are?

I hear the concerns, and agree there is some base for complaint. But this whole idea of disregard of their customers is simply not born out by the facts. The fact of their daily participation in these forums alone gives the lie to that idea. Their constant efforts to improve and fix TD are more than proof of their commitment and respect for us, their customers. If you want to see total disregard for their customers, visit the "Things" forums. You'll see disregard on a scale you can't even imagine coming from here.

Change is painful and difficult for most of us. But based on the reactions to the new TD, it's hard to justify any accusation of disregard. This new version is, for the vast majority of users, much, much better, both practically and aesthetically. Who here wouldn't go through the pain of this change to achieve in the end, a vastly superior tool? I'm glad I did.

For those that can't make the switch comfortably, can't see the improvements, maybe it's time to move on to something more suited to your needs. But this change has only solidified my commitment to TD because of the obvious major effort they've made to improving their product in response to numerous requests, even in the face of considerable criticism from a few of their customers. The new TD is faster, better and prettier! Sorry if you can't see it because you're workflow got interrupted for a day.

Well said Salgud! I was using TD on the day that the change occurred, and I was pleasantly surprised that when I hit refresh, a new more beautiful TD was before my eyes. It made me want to use TD even more. I've seen other more beautiful products, but I always come back to TD. It's the best that is out there.

It's not perfect, but it is the best out there. Keep on the good work. Thank you for all you do. :)